Currently, hosting providers can decide whether to voluntarily comply with removal requests in the area of „Islamist terrorism“ from Europol. From 7 June, these will become removal orders, which can be sent directly to companies by national authorities via a new platform.
With the Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU), Europol operates since 2015 a platform for tracking postings that police authorities classify as „terrorist“ or „violent extremist“. It is part of Europol’s Counter-Terrorism Centre in The Hague. So far, the reports from the EU IRU are so-called referrals, i.e. requests for deletion, which are passed on to the corresponding hosting providers.
The companies decide for themselves whether to comply with the objectionable content, but in the past it was removed immediately in most cases. In addition to providers such as Google, Meta or Apple, Telegram also cooperates with Europol and has participated in joint „action days“ on the internet since 2019, for example. „Referral Unit at Europol: German police had thousands of internet contents removed last year“ weiterlesen
